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Version: S.01.01
Last update: March 14, 2003
1. Does SPI for Citrix MetaFrame affect the
MetaFrame Data Store?
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame does not affect the
MetaFrame farm Data Store in any way.
2. Does SPI for Citrix MetaFrame modify anything
on the farm?
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame does not modify anything
on the farm.
3. What kind of reports can be generated with
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame? What criteria can you use? For example, we
want a report on how many users on the whole farm were logged on at 5:00
am.
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame implements 45 reports.
Reports are fixed (cannot be parameterized), and cover a wide selection
of criteria.
The main report areas are as follows:
-
Top Applications (by CPU, memory, and number of
launched instances)
-
Top Servers (by average session latency)
-
MetaFrame Services (CPU, memory, and swap use)
-
Published Applications (number of their users)
-
Users (number of logged-in users)
-
Sessions (logon/logoff activity, number of
sessions in specific state, detailed session report)
-
Accounting (user and application scope)
-
Threshold Assistant (helps adjust monitoring
policies to actual environment values)
All reports are usually available on the farm and
individual server level, and for the last 24 hours and last 28 days.
Reports covering an interval of 24 hours mostly have hourly, and some
even minute, accuracy. Reports covering periods of several days mostly
have daily, and some even hourly, accuracy.
Specifically, you can see how many users were
logged-in to the farm at 5:00am from the report Number of Logged-in
Users (farm/yesterday).
The SPI for Citrix MetaFrame development team is
also able to develop custom reports based on the performance data that
the SPI is collecting, should any customer have such a need. For
additional information, please send an Email to
support-metafspi@hermes-softlab.com.
4. Since it is mentioned that you can logoff
users and reset users, which can be done by Citrix itself, what other
functions can it perform and what are the advantages of using SPI for
Citrix MetaFrame instead of the built-in functions of Citrix.
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame has certain features, as
follows, which are not available in Citrix MetaFrame itself:
-
Mass operations, such as send message to all
farm/zone/server/user sessions, disconnect/logoff all
farm/zone/server/user sessions, and enable/disable logons to
farm/zone.
-
Allows starting/stopping/checking the status of
MetaFrame services on any server in a farm from the HP Operations
Manager for Windows console.
-
Generates a service map for each farm that it is
managing. A service map is a very powerful concept, which depicts in
graphical format, farm topology (farm-zones-servers hierarchy) and
most importantly, dependencies between published applications and
individual MetaFrame servers. By visualizing these dependencies, you
can immediately see which published applications are impacted by a
specific incident that occurred on one of MetaFrame servers. This
allows prioritizing incident resolution according to the importance of
published applications for company operations.
5. What other monitoring of client side
connectivity does SPI for Citrix MetaFrame perform?
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame performs server-side
monitoring. All of its modules reside and execute only on MetaFrame
servers. As such, it is able to monitor those client parameters that are
available on the server. Currently, SPI for Citrix MetaFrame monitors
average and last recorded ICA client session latency.
6. We are going to FR3 for Citrix, any issues?
According to our information, Feature Release 3
(FR3) was not yet released. As soon as it will be, we will test the
compatibility of SPI for Citrix MetaFrame with it and then issue a
compatibility statement. However, we do not expect any issues since as a
rule, each FR is backwards compatible with all previous FR versions.
7. What does it monitor on the farm, i.e,
printer map back issues, client drive map back issues, application load
balancing, etc?
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame monitors the following on
each MetaFrame server:
-
Forwards all MetaFrame-related Windows Event Log
messages to the HP Operations Manager for Windows console as soon as
they are logged.
-
Periodically checks whether MetaFrame services
are running and sends a message to the HP Operations Manager for
Windows console if they are not. Services that are monitored include:
IMA Service, MFCom Service, Client Network Service, Terminal Services,
Encryption Service, SSL Server Relay, Installer Service, and Resource
Manager Mail Service.
-
Periodically checks the following session
metrics/parameters:
-
Session CPU, memory, swap, private bytes usage
-
Total Errors, Total Frames, Total Timeouts -
Average and Last Recorded ICA Session latency
-
Number of processes running across all sessions
-
Number of All, Active, and Disconnected
sessions, and sessions in all other states When the metrics
mentioned here cross defined thresholds for any session, SPI for
Citrix MetaFrame sends a message to the HP Operations Manager for
Windows console.
-
Notification is sent to the HP Operations
Manager for Windows console each time a Data Collector change is
detected in a zone.
All messages sent to the HP Operations Manager for
Windows console are also reflected in the farm's service map, where you
can immediately see which published applications may be affected because
of the incident that occurred.
All issues mentioned in the question above seem to
be logged to the Windows Event Log, and would therefore be caught by SPI
for Citrix MetaFrame and forwarded to the HP Operations Manager for
Windows console.
8. Citrix MetaFrame XPe already includes
integration with OpenView called Citrix Network Manager. How does SPI
for Citrix MetaFrame differ from that integration?
As part of its Citrix Network Manager package, a
plug-in for the HP Operations Manager Network Node Manager product (see
http://openview.hp.com/products/nnm/index.asp) is included. This
plug-in allows interaction between Citrix SNMP agents and the Network
Node Manager product.
Using the HP Network Node Manager, it is then
possible to perform simple management tasks such as the following:
-
Terminate processes on MetaFrame XPe servers
-
Shut down and restart MetaFrame XPe servers
-
Disconnect, log off, and send a message to an
active session on a MetaFrame XPe server.
On the other side, SPI for Citrix MetaFrame is a
fully-featured management solution that integrates with the HP
Operations Manager for Windows product (see
http://openview.hp.com/products/opwindows/index.asp).
On every MetaFrame server, it allows for the
following:
-
Collecting performance information such as
published application CPU, memory use, etc.
-
Executing monitoring policies such as alerting on
high session memory use, etc.
-
Forwarding all MetaFrame-related Windows event
log entries
-
Executing actions such as send a message to all
sessions of a user, stop IMA service, etc.
-
Produces many different reports such as Top 10
applications by CPU use in farm in the last 28 days, etc.
-
Produces a service map with published
application/MetaFrame server dependency visualization and incident
propagation
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame is a much more complete
management solution. Additionally, it does not require the Citrix SNMP
agent in order to operate correctly.
9. How does SPI for Citrix MetaFrame compare to
the Citrix Network Manager plug-in for IBM Tivoli NetView that ships
with MetaFrame XPe?
IBM Tivoli NetView
(http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/netview/) is a product very
similar to the HP Network Node Manager. As such, it allows managing your
network equipment and systems using the SNMP protocol. The Citrix
Network Manager plug-in for IBM Tivoli NetView allows interaction
between Citrix SNMP agents and the NetView product.
The answer to this question is therefore the same
as the answer to question number 8.
10. How does SPI for Citrix MetaFrame compare to
MetaFrame policies and tools that are bundled with the HP Operations
Manager
for Windows?
HP Operations Manager for Windows comes bundled
with 13 tools and 5 monitoring policies related to the management of
Citrix MetaFrame. These policies and tools only cover MetaFrame version
1.8; MetaFrame XP is not covered.
Monitoring policies include:
-
forwarding NT event log messages related to
MetaFrame 1.8
-
monitoring of ICA Browser service and its %
Processor Time
-
monitoring of Program Neighborhood service
Tools include:
-
start/stop ICA Browser and Program Neighborhood
service
-
disconnect/send message to a session
-
show information on MetaFrame licenses
-
list all processes/users/sessions on a MetaFrame
server
-
list all MetaFrame servers
SPI for Citrix MetaFrame is a fully-featured Citrix
MetaFrame XP management solution that includes the following:
-
51 MetaFrame-related monitoring policies (for
details, see answers to questions numbered 5 and 7)
-
55 MetaFrame-related tools (for details, see
answer to question number 4)
-
45 pre-defined reports (for details, see answer
to question number 3)
-
service map showing MetaFrame farm topology and
dependencies between published applications and MetaFrame servers. It
is constantly mapping all MetaFrame-related messages to this topology
for easier visualization of message impact.
11. Does SPI for Citrix MetaFrame create reports
based on data collected by the Citrix MetaFrame XP Resource Manager
component?
No. SPI for Citrix MetaFrame is totally independent
of the Citrix MetaFrame XP Resource Manager component. It collects
session and published application performance data in a way that has
very little impact on a MetaFrame server's resources, and produces
reports based on this information.
For more information about SPI products send us
e-mail:
spi-info@hermes-softlab.com |
